Royals manager will have chance to try for better ending in 2013

Tommy Shields will have a chance redo the ending with the Burlington Royals.

Shields will return for a second season with the Appalachian League baseball team. The 68-game regular season begins in June.

But it was a pair of games in September that brought the most anticipation and then anguish for Shields during the 2012 season.

That’s when the Royals lost two extra-inning games to the Elizabethton Twins in the league championship series. In the decisive Game 3, the Royals were within an out of the title with a five-run lead and couldn’t hold on.

“I have no idea of what you’re talking about,” Shields said jokingly when asked about the painful conclusion to an otherwise noteworthy season.

Several months later, it still boils.

“It’s the worst loss I’ve ever been a part of,” Shields said. “I’ve replayed it a thousand times and I would do a thousand different things. You have to move on.”

Shields was named the Appalachian League Manager of the Year as the Royals built a 41-25 regular-season record and won the East Division title.

Many of the 2012 Burlington players were on hand in the fall for the parent organization’s instructional league in Surprise, Ariz. That gave Shields a chance to further gage reaction from the devastating end to the season in what the manager referred to as “abrupt” conclusion.

“You talk through some things,” he said. “We could talk and joke and play ball.”

Since then, Shields said he had a good autumn bow-hunting for deer in both Pennsylvania, where he lives and in Illinois.

Shields will remain in a scouting role for the Kansas City organization until taking charge of the Burlington team in June. That was a similar set-up to last year. He’ll be sent around the country for about four months in the scouting capacity.

“I think I like working with the young kids,” he said. “It gives me flexibility to do both. When you break it up like that, you can do both.”

Unlike last year, he’ll concentrate on amateur scouting and there aren’t expected to be any professional scouting assignments for Shields in 2013, he said.

He was in Texas for a scouting function earlier this month.

“I told Lonnie (Goldberg, the organization’s scouting director) about three of those guys would look good in a Burlington uniform,” Shields said.

Shields’ staff will consist of pitching coach Carlos Martinez, who was on board in the same capacity in 2012, hitting coach Abraham Nunez and trainer Saburo Hagihara. Nunez worked in the same capacity in the Dominican Summer League in 2012. A strength and conditioning coach has yet to be named.

All the managerial positions remained the same across the organization with the exception of in the Dominican Summer League.